Old Or Not, The Rolling Stones Rock in New Scorsese Movie
When I saw the Rolling Stones in concert, there were a lot of jokes about them being the geezers of rock and roll, who’d probably need walkers onstage and so on and so forth.
That was 19 years ago.
Mick Jagger was 46, which now seems pretty young in retrospect. Because now the Stones are well into the AARP demographic. In fact, the baby of the group, Ron Wood, is 60. Their oldest, Charlie Watts, will be 67 in three weeks.
But you know what? These guys still rock.
And I don’t mean they rock like you’d expect old guys to rock. The Stones — arguably the best live band ever (only challenged by the Who and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band) — still outperform any band out there. This is nicely demonstrated in the Martin Scorsese movie, “Shine a Light,” playing at the Palm.
While some bands do get tiresome after many years, others — like Springsteen — hone their act and actually get better.
Wrinkles? Gray hair? So what.
“Shine a Light” chronicles a Stones show at a small theater in New York. In between footage of the show, Scorsese shows us some nice vintage clips. In one black and white clip, a reporter asks a young Mick Jagger if he could see himself doing this at age 60.
Jagger doesn’t hesitate to answer: “Oh, absolutely,” he says, inviting applause from movie crowds of the future.
Even at 64, Jagger’s energy onstage is not only very natural, it’s mesmerizing. When Jack White joins the Stones on stage for a song, you can’t help but feel he’s way out of his league — because he is.
Buddy Guy, however, does shine in his guest spot because he knows how to play off the Stones and vice versa.
Scorsese used 10 cameras to film this, so the viewer is treated to all sorts of interesting angles. (At times, you can actually see fillings on the backsides of Jagger’s teeth.) The song selection is refreshing because mixed in with the standards are some deep cuts you rarely heard on the radio.
But best of all, after all these years, the Stones are still cool. Just watch Keith Richards drop to his knees while massaging a guitar solo. Get a load of the sly interplay between Richards, Ron Wood and Buddy Guy. And, of course, there’s Jagger’s kinetic dancing, which at times seems silly – until you realize it’s oh so right.
If the Stones acted like old men, they would be lame has-beens. Fortunately, inside their old bodies live the same young men who started rocking over 40 years ago.
Can’t wait to see it. I hear that Christina Aguilera also acquits herself quite nicely.